The Week - French language policy; Bill Bradley ends presidential bid; other political events

The French civil service, living up to their nation's reputation for linguistic purism, have banned the words "e-mail" and "start-up," replacing them with equivalent French neologisms. Of course, the bureaucrats are still allowed to use the indispensable French word chomage, which means unemployment.

Bill Bradley left the Democratic race Super Wednesday without winning one primary. His life has been a long decline-from earnest Princeton star, to solid Knick, to dull and disappointing senator, to dull and demagogic candidate. Bradley's vulgar reverse-racism-he kissed the Rev. Sharpton's pinkie early and openly-was muffled only by the low-watt persona that was a product of his priggish self-esteem. The 1964 -65 college basketball season remains: fleeting, now distant, but still, somehow, eternal.

That was a sharp question Jeff Greenfield asked at the last Democratic presidential debate: How could Bradley and Al Gore justify their overtures to Al Sharpton given the outrage they have shown (or feigned) over George W. Bush's campaign stop at Bob Jones University? First Gore said that "in America we believe in redemption"; he provided no evidence, of course, that any has taken place. Then he said, "I did not meet with Reverend Sharpton publicly. I met with him privately." (Doesn't that make it worse, not better?) "And, you know, there is a racial divide in the way people in different races perceive certain events. I would not be so quick to completely dismiss what he has to say about some of these issues." (So: It's a black thing, you wouldn't understand.) "Look at the number of rabbis who went to join Reverend Sharpton in his organizing of demonstrations and pickets following the Abner Louima case . . . " (Some of his best friends are rabbis.) It was Bradley, however, who won the pander prize: "It sometimes takes someone that rubs a part of the population the wrong way in order to get the attention focused on the issue at hand. I view his activities in that light. . . . That's where I think you have to see him, in that tradition of civil rights in this country." (Sure, part of the population objects when someone incites murder and falsely accuses law- enforcement officials of rape. But Martin Luther King was controversial too.) Disgraceful.

Gary Bauer entered Republican presidential politics because he wanted to be an advocate for socially conservative positions in a contest where, he believed, they were not being adequately expounded. He left it the ineffectual and embarrassed camp follower of losing candidate John McCain. After Bauer gave up his own race, he endorsed McCain; he stood at McCain's side when the senator compared Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on the eve of the Virginia primary. Bauer wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times defending the McCain speech. Only after McCain further called Robert son and Falwell "evil"- and only after he lost decisively in Virginia-did Bauer clean his ears and recognize that McCain's attacks were "unwarranted, ill-advised, and divisive." McCain had been toadying to the Left; Bauer was the toady of the toady. Self-imagined purists should not themselves run for office: Leave the volte-faces and switchbacks of politics to those who have taken it up professionally.

The Republican party may be in poor shape in California, but conservatism is alive and well. In the state's primary on March 7, 61 percent of voters supported the codification of marriage as a heterosexual institution-confirming that gay marriage can't win a vote anywhere outside a courtroom. Voters also beat back the latest attempt to weaken Proposition 13, the 1978 measure that put limits on taxes, spending, and bond issuance. And Ron Unz's campaign-finance reform lost by a landslide. The exit polls told another heartening story: "Clinton fatigue" turns out to be a real phenomenon. Only 17 percent of the voters who disapprove of Clinton personally backed Gore-and the disapprovers were 61 percent of the electorate. On abortion, meanwhile, only 30 percent of voters agreed with Al Gore's position (that it should be legal "always"); most voters with lukewarm views on the subject supported pro-life Republicans, not pro-choice Democrats. If Republicans cannot succeed in California, it's not the fault of the state's voters.

Who should join in piling on George W. for his supposed anti-Catholicism but the Log Cabin Republicans. The gay group cut an ad that said, "Bush went to Bob Jones University, a place that teaches intolerance against the Catholic Church, gays, and minorities." Next: a Catholic/Log Cabin symposium on St. Sebastian: "Martyr or Object of Desire?"

To date, the only person facing criminal penalties in the wake of President Clinton's misdeeds is the whistle-blower who started it all, Linda Tripp. The woman who should have been a poster-child for feminist groups-a single mother of two and career civil servant singled out for "speaking truth to power"-could instead go to jail or pay a hefty fine for exposing behavior that made Bob Packwood's career-ending foibles seem tame. The silver lining is that she may take a few people with her. District judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered the Defense Department to produce all records, including phone logs and e-mails "to or from any member of the media," concerning the illegal release of Tripp's confidential security file. The same administration that decried Ken Starr's "systematic illegal leaks" deliberately leaked Tripp's file to The New Yorker. Which is a crime-even if committed against Linda Tripp.